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Gravekeeper Speculation

Just want to see the general position of the community on this hero.

Personally, I think the hero's practically perfect, the only problem is his ultimate. The minions don't prioritize towers, making it hilariously easy to stop his ult from pushing since anything that walks within about 500 units of one minion pulls them all off the tower.

The passive makes for great early harassment, and I like the stun. Corpse explosion is a bit iffy, but I blame that on the current bug which causes Gravekeeper to consume all corpses in the radius if he attacks while on more than one corpse (fixed internally, according to the bug report I sent in).

I'm not good with numbers, but to me he looks like he is in a right spot.
His abilities are practical, ulti's damage is balanced by the XBOXHUEG manacost and Corpse explosion has a neat mechanic.
He can pubstomp pretty well, because people haven't used to take corpses in consideration in their position. But we'll see if Gravekeeper's corpse generating ability will make up his dependency to them in terms of damage dealing.

He's an excellent counter to many of the more powerful melee mids, and perhaps a soft counter to a dual mid configuration with his excellent last-hitting capability and tremendous harass potential against the babysat melee.

His abilities have excellent synergy and require thoughtful use of corpses as an important resource. While the deprivation of corpses can sometimes be very frustrating, the mechanic helps to balance him out.

He is very versatile; in a role of support, he has extremely high efficiency per gold investment. As a semi-carry, he also utilizes extra gold very well, and the scaling on his ultimate has the potential to be quite significant if an enemy team doesn't build properly against it (and even then, the damage potential from the corpses left over gives him significant teamfight ability). He is always useful in ganks.

He appears well-balanced, with high numbers and utility kept in check by the limiting resource of corpses. In some ways, he utilizes the mechanic in a fashion very similar to that of Nightstalker from DotA. In any case, it seems too early to be putting a good label on him; if he does turn out imbalanced in some way, he can be easily rectified with minor buffs or nerfs.

Gimmicky hero at best. Almost all of the skills are basically already in the game, they've just been added a condition for execution. For example the passive needs a corpse, otherwise it's just another attack damage booster in the likes of Puppet Master's passive.

Corpse Explosion is a too situational skill. You really have to have a dumbass against you if he voluntarily walks into a pile of corpses. Attack - Stun - Attack - Stun - Explosion is a combo you might see if you're standing next to a few corpses, this'll do 360 damage, which is just a tad bit higher than the "normal" nukes you can find amongst the heroes.

Same with the ultimate, too situational. Basically the only situations you can hope to have any use of this ulti are a) backdooring and b) fights in the jungle/river without creeps nearby. The zombies have a bad habbit of chasing creeps or players with really high movement speed, rendering them useless. In mid/late game you can just outrun the zombies easily. The exploding ones don't really do enough damage imho, I've never seen anyone even die to this ulti. Compared to his other spells, the ulti really takes way too much mana too. The cooldown is also too high for a spell as mediocre as this.

Which brings me to another point, his intelligence gain. Why is it so big? The only spell that really spends mana is his ulti, you'll basically never go OOM by spamming Corpse Toss. I know he's made to be a semicarry, but despite his humongous int gain, he really doesn't work that way at all. It's like trying to make Artesia into a semicarry, there's just nothing that really helps him achieve that goal.

All in all a subpar hero with some mediocre skills, others too situational. There are just too many conditions for him to be succesful in a match.

Gimmicky hero at best. Almost all of the skills are basically already in the game, they've just been added a condition for execution. For example the passive needs a corpse, otherwise it's just another attack damage booster in the likes of Puppet Master's passive.

Corpse Explosion is a too situational skill. You really have to have a dumbass against you if he voluntarily walks into a pile of corpses. Attack - Stun - Attack - Stun - Explosion is a combo you might see if you're standing next to a few corpses, this'll do 360 damage, which is just a tad bit higher than the "normal" nukes you can find amongst the heroes.

Same with the ultimate, too situational. Basically the only situations you can hope to have any use of this ulti are a) backdooring and b) fights in the jungle/river without creeps nearby. The zombies have a bad habbit of chasing creeps or players with really high movement speed, rendering them useless. In mid/late game you can just outrun the zombies easily. The exploding ones don't really do enough damage imho, I've never seen anyone even die to this ulti. Compared to his other spells, the ulti really takes way too much mana too. The cooldown is also too high for a spell as mediocre as this.

Which brings me to another point, his intelligence gain. Why is it so big? The only spell that really spends mana is his ulti, you'll basically never go OOM by spamming Corpse Toss. I know he's made to be a semicarry, but despite his humongous int gain, he really doesn't work that way at all. It's like trying to make Artesia into a semicarry, there's just nothing that really helps him achieve that goal.

All in all a subpar hero with some mediocre skills, others too situational. There are just too many conditions for him to be succesful in a match.

Forced synergy all up ins. Hero is hamstrung by design insistence on it.

Forced synergy all up ins. Hero is hamstrung by design insistence on it.

It's not really forced synergy, it's just a "theme" (using corpses) that is part of every skill.

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It's not really forced synergy, it's just a "theme" (using corpses) that is part of every skill.

It helps noone to act dense, it IS forced synergy, if all his 4 skills can work together with the greatest effect. Create bodies with a stun, passive based on picking up bodies, nuke based on number of bodies... Are you for real, they're ALL related. It's far more than a "theme".

For example the passive needs a corpse, otherwise it's just another attack damage booster in the likes of Puppet Master's passive.

So basically you are trying to say that if we were using your logic, any possible skill that could ever be invented is already in the game...

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So basically you are trying to say that if we were using your logic, any possible skill that could ever be invented is already in the game...

You have totally missed the point. What I'm saying is that all of Gravekeeper's skills are already in the game, they have just been added a condition. Unlike any other hero, there's nothing that makes him stand out among the masses.

For example the first skill, Corpse Toss, could've been made so that it targets ground instead of being a targeted 100% hit spell. This way there would've been more uses for Corpse Explosion since you could stack corpses where you want. If they had thought the concept out before pushing him in the game, they could've done a lot of really cool things with him.

Other than that this guy is great. I think maybe a bit too squishy to really be a consistent carry, needs too many items (same deal as vindicator carry, except vindi can "carry" by being a huge pain with tankiness + his aura).

Just because all skills work together doesn't make it any more or less forced...

By that measure Valk completely horrible and forced too. The only skill on Gravekeeper that isn't good/functional without his other skills (well, primarily the ultimate really) is his 2nd skill. The other three skills are perfectly fine working on their own.

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Just because all skills work together doesn't make it any more or less forced...

By that measure Valk completely horrible and forced too. The only skill on Gravekeeper that isn't good/functional without his other skills (well, primarily the ultimate really) is his 2nd skill. The other three skills are perfectly fine working on their own.

If valk did extra damage with call of the valkyrie on someone who is arrow stunned; if leap increased the aoe of call of the valkyrie; if valk's ultimate made arrow home.

Valk is problematic for reasons that aren't about forced synergy. Valkyrie has synergy between her skills, through the fact that her skills are synergenic, not because one skill is specifically designed to buff her other skills.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Skyve

In the end, Valkyrie's skills synergize in such a way that they cover all their possible weaknesses.

If valk did extra damage with call of the valkyrie on someone who is arrow stunned; if leap increased the aoe of call of the valkyrie; if valk's ultimate made arrow home.

Valk is problematic for reasons that aren't about forced synergy. Valkyrie has synergy between her skills, through the fact that her skills are synergenic, not because one skill is specifically designed to buff her other skills.

Edit:
Yes, this is exactly the problem with valkyrie, not forced synergy.

Thanks for adding up on my points.

@ Skyve

Are you STILL not getting it? We're trying to get across that Gravekeeper's skills boost and complement each other based on the very mechanics of the skills. He even used more concrete examples of what Valkyrie would be like with forced synergy.

Her skills have synergy, yeah, but that's because they are so versatile, no mechanic on Valkyrie makes her skills "boost" each other, like Gravekeeper.
Yeah, he can use his stun with independency from his other skills, but it doesn't mean it wasn't closely made so that it benefited both his corpse explosion and passive by leaving a body. All this attention to trying to get the hero to fully combine his skills is probably what made him turn out to be mediocre.

@ Lethe

You seemed to miss that I'm implying Gravekeeper is a impractical and unreliable hero due to too much emphasis on skills working together. To be honest it's what really kills him, if they bothered to make 1 skill that would prove to simply be reliable without trying to make it synergize with all his others, resulting in something way more useful (even a AoE stun, who cares), he could actually have relevance throughout any balanced game.

Valk has no sort of forced synergy actually, it's simply a whole lot of utility built in across the board with her skills, which enables for a lot of purposes, but it isn't exactly a forced synergy aspect.

A skill can work well independently and still have clear technical synergy with the other skills of 1 hero. That's mainly the point. I'm not saying it's a bad or a good thing.

Valk has no sort of forced synergy actually, it's simply a whole lot of utility built in across the board with her skills, which enables for a lot of purposes, but it isn't exactly a forced synergy aspect.

A skill can work well independently and still have clear technical synergy with the other skills of 1 hero. That's mainly the point. I'm not saying it's a bad or a good thing.

Then you have a very inconsistent view of what synergy (and as such forced synergy) is...

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Then you have a very inconsistent view of what synergy (and as such forced synergy) is...

...

It's fairly obvious that Valkyrie's skills can be complemented with great potential, but the effects have nothing to do with each other; you have a blink, a long range stun-nuke and a PBAoE nuke. They work great together, yes, but they're not mechanically made better by using them in conjunction.

On the other hand, having corpses available (which you can generate) and dealing damage out of them is the basic path to Gravekeeper, and it is very clear that it synergises perfectly, while as opposed to Valkyrie, doesn't give him half as much versatility.
Having very similiar and related mechanics working into the overall playability of 1 hero restricts him more than it makes him interesting and reliable, that's the thing here.

When it comes down to it, you can't really say this hero is any decent / reliable without the availabilty of bodies.
While a Valkyrie, with completely independent skills and extremely different mechanics that can work to great effect together or independently, is and always will be a top tier hero in the game for that reason.